


Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye

by thelightninginme



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Complicated Relationships, M/M, Missing Scene, Semi-unrequited love, i hope reading this hurts as much as writing it did, i mean that in the nicest way possible, if you love someone let them go i guess, marvel stop making this ship so complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-02-28 16:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18760639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelightninginme/pseuds/thelightninginme
Summary: Fuck, but a part of him wants to hear every single detail and another part of him wants to clamp his hands over his ears and run screaming. But there's one thing he has to know, because otherwise, what was the point of all this?“Did I kill Howard?” It comes out in little more than a whisper.OR: How I think the conversation between Bucky and Steve on that bench would go. GIANT Endgame spoilers within.





	1. Part One

There’s a long moment where Sam and Bucky teeter on the edge of a knife’s point, both hesitating, though for different reasons, though both of them counterbalanced by the old man on the bench. Sam just stands there, looking hesitantly between the shield in his hands, and Bucky. 

If Steve had tried to give it to him, Bucky would’ve tossed it, frisbee-style, into the lake. This and a thousand other quips bubble up in his chest but die in his throat, so instead Bucky just nods his approval in what he hopes is a reassuring gesture. 

And then the total lack of surprise on Bucky’s face registers for Sam, and his expression goes from uncertain to betrayed and hurt and angry. Well, that’s going to be a fun conversation. 

Bucky sits gingerly on the edge of the bench, hands still crammed in his pockets.  “Hey, Buck,” says the old man, and Bucky nods stiffly. 

“You came back,” is the only thing he can think to say. 

“I said I would. Did you think I would change my mind?”

Bucky has no good answer for that, so he just exhales loudly. He reaches out and gingerly runs a fingertip across the surface of the gold band on Steve’s finger. “How was she?” Bucky asks. 

If Steve notices the tremor in Bucky’s hand, or his clumsy attempt to change the topic, he doesn’t say anything. “She was wonderful.” 

“Did you ever see the girls?” 

“Of course. Often. And their kids - the kids all loved having their uncle around.” 

He can’t picture it, horsing around with his nieces and nephews. Today they're all grayer than he is. He supposes that’s the point, because it didn’t happen to him. “I was there,” Bucky says quietly, somewhere between a statement and a question. 

Steve turns to look at him and Bucky just looks down at his hands because he’s not ready to look, not yet, not to see those eyes in a face decades older than the one he said goodbye to not five minutes ago. 

“It was the first thing I did,” Steve says slowly, like he's talking to a child. “Just like we talked about. Peggy went with me.” 

“She did?” 

“Yeah. I told her it was dangerous but she insisted. I don’t think she really believed me, that we’d find you.” 

Fuck, but a part of him wants to hear every single detail and another part of him wants to clamp his hands over his ears and run screaming. But there's one thing he has to know, because otherwise, what was the point of all this?

“Did I kill Howard?” It comes out in little more than a whisper. 

“No.” 

Bucky exhales slowly. “Tony was there?” 

“Yes. They’re too alike to ever really see eye to eye, but…I think I helped. I think they at least knew that they loved each other.” 

And that’s all this was really about for Bucky, wasn’t it? To put the ghosts of the Starks to rest. If he couldn’t bring them back to life, then he’d repent by giving them Steve. He’d let Steve go without anything more than a quiet ‘I’ll miss you.’ He’d let Steve love the version of him that was easier to love, that one that would have been miles closer to the Bucky he remembered. 

“So I never went…” Bucky trails off and gestures vaguely. 

“No. They’d only put you under a few times, and not for very long, so - so you were…” It’s Steve’s turn to trail off and gesture helplessly. 

“I wasn't as fucked up." He huffs a humorless laugh. "It’s okay, you can say it.” 

“Don't get me wrong, you didn't have an easy time with it. And it was never about you being fucked up or not fucked up. It was about making things right.” 

“I know that.” That’s all it’s ever been about, from the first time he caught Steve in another county’s recruitment office to the moment the night before when Steve asked him to talk. 

“I don’t think you do." Steve sounds so mournful when he says it that Bucky makes himself look. It's really not so bad; his half-formed fear that he would not even recognize Steve proves unfounded.

  "Losing you, in '45, was the worst thing that ever happened to me.” 

Steve says this so factually that the only thing Bucky can blurt out in reply is, “Really?” 

“I didn't know what I was supposed to do in a world without you until Shield put something in front of me that I could punch. And then when I found out - what they did to you - I just thought, I can’t fix this. They took everything from you and I didn't stop it. And it wasn’t until - that second, or maybe it was the third time I went out to Wakanda to see you. And when I got there you were teaching the kids baseball. That was when I finally realized - no, I couldn’t fix you. It wasn’t my place to fix you. All I had to do was get out of the way.” 

Bucky looks down at his hands, which he can’t seem to stop from trembling, hands he had once nearly killed Steve with. “But the only reason there was anything left to fix in the first place is because you believed that there was. In me. In us. You know that, right? You know that there - there was never a time when I didn’t need you.” The words grow strained and small around the lump in his throat. "What do you think - what's going to happen when I lose you, huh?"

“You'll be all right. I know you will. That’s twice now I’ve seen you rebuild a life for yourself out of nothing. That’s how I know. You’ll be okay in a way I never could’ve been.” 

He thinks about how hard it was to step back onto a battlefield, how gentle T'Challa was in asking him. How he probably wouldn't have left that quiet spit of land in Wakanda if not for the fact that Steve was going to be there. He thinks about how he never once truly had a life outside of Steve, until he became too much of a liability to be in Steve's life, and how much easier it was to find one of his own than he would have thought.

But still… “I’m not okay now. I’m not.” Bucky stares aimlessly at some point on the horizon when he says it, but even so he can see Steve faltering out of the corner of his eye. Bucky huffs in annoyance. “You’ve had literal decades to make your peace with this. I’ve had less than twenty-four hours.” 

“You’ve got - we’ve got time,” Steve says quietly. “Erskine told me once - the life expectancy - ”

“I know.” It is time, a blip of it, at least, and Bucky supposes he ought to be grateful for that much, supposes he knew this was the tradeoff they were making. “It’s fine. I always knew I’d outlive you. Ever since we were kids, and I was always bringing you your homework after school.” He doesn’t say it to be morbid. It’s just a fact of the world, a thing Bucky has known for as long as he’s known Steve. All the same, though, it’s satisfying when Steve says nothing. What is there that he can possibly say? He cannot dispute Bucky’s long premonition now. Bucky lets the silence hang between them until it starts to get heavy. “So what’ll you do now?” he asks. “With the time you have left.” 

“Stay retired, I guess. What about you? What’re you gonna do?” 

“Same.” 

Steve shifts a little on the bench next to him. “I hear Wakanda is nice this time of year,” he says lightly, but there’s both a question and a promise in there, too. 

And fuck, but it was always Steve’s soul that he loved, wasn’t it? And that brave stupid heart that can’t even make a selfish choice without also making some kind of sacrifice. 

“It is.” 


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who else here LOVES the Sam and Bucky dynamic and can’t wait for more?!?!

Bucky indulges the part of him that can still feel something akin to nostalgia, and watches Sam toss the shield around a little. 

“What the  _fuck_ was that?” Bucky had once yelled at Steve, after watching him…just casually toss himself at a faceless Hydra goon with a gun. 

And Steve had given him the most innocent ‘who, me?’ look. “You were the one that taught me to get them on the ground no matter what.” 

“Everything I taught you applied when you were ninety pounds soaking wet!” He had hauled the mud-splattered discarded shield off the ground and thrust it at Steve with trembling hands. “You want to put someone on the ground, use this, jackass.” 

Bucky is jerked abruptly back to the present by Sam’s shout. “Want to go a couple rounds?” Sam calls. “Could use some practice with this thing.” The words are friendly enough, but even at a distance Bucky can pick up on the boiling undercurrent of anger. 

Well, might as well get this over with now. He makes a mental note to send Pepper a nice fruit basket. He likes her. Too bad they couldn’t have met under better circumstances. 

“Sam,” Bucky calls in what he hopes is a placating tone as he closes the gap between them. 

“Fight me.” 

“No.” Bucky stops ten feet away or so, and spreads his arms out. “You can hit me if you want, though.” 

Sam looks as though he really might for a second, and then he tosses the shield on the ground with a wet thump. He laughs humorlessly. “Just when I think I have you two figured out.”

“If he wanted you to know, he would’ve told you.” 

“Oh, right, because you’re - what - the good little soldier doing whatever Steve tells you? Fuck, man - and here I was yesterday watching you, thinking, wow, he’s really broken up about Tony Stark - ”

If Sam is going to take his grief out on Bucky, then fine, but that comment and the implication that Bucky doesn’t still mourn his own victims rankles a bit. “Steve didn’t say anything to me until last night.” 

“Then I see why this is so hard for you, that you couldn’t talk him out of something for once,” Sam snaps. His expression slowly morphs into one of disbelief when Bucky doesn’t respond. “You didn’t even try to convince him not to do it.” It’s somewhere between a statement and a question. 

“Not really.” 

“Then you can’t - Bucky. You can’t seriously look me in the eye and tell me you’re fine with all of this.” 

Now it’s Bucky’s turn to laugh humorlessly. “What does it matter now? It’s done.” And yet, he still can’t seem to make himself meet Sam’s gaze. “He told me he wanted to make it right. I just…” He shrugs. “Wasn’t enough.” 

“No,” Sam says vehemently, and Bucky looks up just in time for Sam to lurch forward and shove him hard in the chest. “Were you there in D.C. when he was in the hospital? No, of course not, because you were the one that put him there. Well, I was there. And I saw - so don’t you stand there and act like you know what you mean to him, because you don’t.” 

That accusation ought to get more under his skin than it does. He ought to get angry, push Sam back. But Bucky is exhausted. He’s not sure when the last time was that he slept. Honestly, if some of Sam’s fury would rub off on Bucky that would be fine, more than fine; anger would be better than this weary resignation. 

Because what else can he be except resigned? Because he didn’t - what, he didn’t act needy enough? Let Steve move on while he was busy trying to get his fucked up head back on straight? He could have convinced Steve not to go, probably, if he’d really tried. What if Steve secretly wanted Bucky to talk him out of it, and Bucky just blanked on the cue? No, that thought leaves almost as soon as he considers it. In the past five years Bucky has found it easier to know Steve's mind than his own. 

No, Steve just sat him down and told him what he was considering so softly, like he was so tired it had him by the throat, and what could Bucky really do except let Steve go to make things right, whatever that meant for him? 

Sam, Bucky realizes, has been waiting for the last few beats for some kind of reaction, bracing for a punch, and when he gets nothing except for Bucky’s gaze just kind of sliding past Sam’s shoulder into the distance, Sam’s expression deflates. “Hell. That’s not - I’m sorry. I didn't mean that." 

Bucky drags his eyes back to meet Sam’s, and nods. “It’s okay,” he says at length. “I already miss him too.” 

“I’m just…not sure. About any of it.”

“Neither was Steve.” 

“You sure you aren’t - you don’t - ?” Sam nods at the shield on the ground. 

“Yes, I’m sure. If you don’t stop asking me that, I will actually fight you. It’s not me. It never was. You'll be good at it. You will."

Sam shifts his weight from foot to foot. Apparently Bucky snarking at him is easier to take than Bucky paying him a genuine compliment. "Listen," he says at length, "if retirement ever gets boring." He shrugs. "Could use a sidekick." 

If you need something to do when Steve is dead and buried. Still, it's a kind offer, one Sam is under no obligation to make. In a way it’s nice to have the reminder that they were still have Steve in common, even after he’s gone. 

“Thank you.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be a one-shot, but then Sam decided he had a few things to get off his chest, so look for part two next week!


End file.
